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This is a very competent mod. It looks great in many places and generally flows very well and there’s no doubt you should play it.

The trouble is that I am left feeling slightly disappointed. Perhaps this is because after 5 years of development I expected more, or perhaps it’s because the mod feels a little too formulaic.

Now, I had the chance to beta test this mod and left it to the rest of the BTC. along with other testers, so what may follow may sound a little churlish.

The first point is that the story starts with a really interesting scenario. Some sort of experiment or project to make an island disappear. The sphere around the island is well done and the starts sets up the mod.

The problem is I don’t really know why I am on the island and why everybody seems to have disappeared except me and the Combine. Okay, I can live with that. but who is this fellow I see in the black and white sequences? And why am I following him?

Then during the middle of the mod he doesn’t appear for quite a while. Is that because David felt the routes were obvious and no help was needed?

More could have been made of my place within the story and those sequences. Let’s look at the ending, which was a total let down for me. There’s no resolution, no explanation and for a brief moment I thought I had been thrown back to the beginning.

I would have prefer to have jumped into the “portal” and appeared in the middle of the ocean, as if I had managed to escape the sphere.

All in all it felt like a wasted opportunity.

Now let’s talk about the actual gameplay and design.

There are some really nice areas and there’s no doubt a lot of work has gone into this mod, but as I mentioned earlier, it feels too formulaic. I get into an area, here some upbeat music and then the Combine arrive, running past a lot of conveniently placed exploding barrels.

Rinse and repeat. Fun once or twice but as something greater it felt empty.

I would have preferred building up the first exit to outside via more glimpses through some windows or wholes, with the “shock” of coming outside being a major battle ground. It was almost wasted by going out on the balcony.

I know I sound pretty negative about the mod but overall I really did enjoy it, I just feel it’s only 4/5 finished and by finished I mean polished.

There were no glaring bugs, a few small issues, but as a whole it’s just not there. At least, that’s how I feel.

It does raise a question about whether people should be advertising that these mods are in development and I recognize that modders get a lot of motivation from showing there work.

To me, it’s like having a personal trainer with you in the gym, the results are great but shouldn’t we be able to do it on our own?

Really enjoyed this one! Great environments with fantastic combat scenarios.

Combat set-ups are some of the best I’ve seen in Half-Life 2 Good looking mapsGood variety in both the environments and enemies

Took too long to really get going imoThe story gets pushed to the side very quickly once the action startsGot stuck in a few areas while looking for the way forward, typically this involved finding a well hidden vent entrance

“been a very long time not playing a mod (in fact, the last I’ve played was Black Mesa).
Fortunately, this release is really good. The modder said it took him 5 years to do this, and I can understand why.

What I mean is that this mod has no new content, but… you will go on with 1/2 hour of exploration, tenseful, with some puzzles… And then all hell will break loose with 90 minutes of non-stop action against headcrabs, zombies, Combine, in every kind of HL2 map you can imagine, indoor or outdoor. There’s always some kind of challenge, of course it starts easy, and then it becomes more and more difficult, but NOT frustrating, so you’ll really enjoy that wonderful trip, in fact I only died numerous times in a map, the one with 3 hunters, but besides that, as I consider myself an “average” player, the rest is just pure fun. I especially enjoyed the tram-ride. Reminded me of H1 (or Black Mesa).

Too bad the story exploded after the interesting beginning and some newspapers on a wall, the ending reminded me Calamity’s ending, with that

The mod looks great the environments are very atmospheric and the story is told in flash back sequences which work quite well as it is interesting looking at the environments before and after and is implemented quite heavily at the beginning the flashes at times feel like they happen too often but they set the tone very well.
Health and ammo placements are stingy I don’t think I was at 100 health at any stage in this mod, then again maybe I’m just a noob. Anyway this was gleefully tense at times but unwelcome and frustrating at others, especially as some encounters lack a decent amount of cover to deal with certain enemies and some weapons could be better placed, some you get in the middle of combat and with Half Life auto switching weapons this leaves the player vulnerable.

Environments while pretty are sometimes feel a bit awkward to navigate in a hurry and there are invisible walls some places that (while I can understand why they are there) could have been left out. Additionally it is often not clear what is required to progress the Half life visual language is not used as much as it should. The puzzles in this map seem to boil down to fetch quests and feel very much like filler and the pace generally doesn’t curve so much as it does jump

Overall it’s a really decent mod, tough, let down slightly by unclear routes and uninteresting puzzles still one of the better mods out there.

I really liked this one. It seemed pretty average at first, but after playing I would say it’s well above that.

The environments are varied and pretty well crafted, the combat is well paced, the level design around these combat areas is well done and it gives alot of tactical possibilities depending on how the player prefers to play.

The story… well it isn’t very deep and barely explains anything at the end, but it is there and some nice details went into it like the newspapers or the holding cells at the start. It’s better than no story at all, but I would have liked to know why you were being held prisoner on this island and who was running the whole thing (I’m assuming the models were of combine soldiers just because it wouldn’t be very easy to replace the models.)

While in general the mod was very good there were somethings that stuck out.

You barely ever use the pistol. It is given to you very early on and right after that you are given a bunch of different weapons and there is no reason to ever use the pistol. I didn’t shoot one bullet before I got the hold of another weapon.

While I really applaud the use of music (which not very mods do well), the combat music was way too repetitive and not suitable for such small encounters. The music went off very quickly and two minutes later it was starting again. Should have definatly used some other music pieces for combat encounters, but the ambient ones were well used.

The jumping puzzles were fun and entertaining but most of the time I went straight for them. This is a problem with alot of mods and even full games. Don’t show me the solution before you show me the problem.

Most of the time the mod was just begging for some sort of stealth. Specially in the “screenshot 76″. The combine were already shooting at me before I even had the crossbow in my hands. I would have loved to aim it, slowly at the combine on the platform and shoot him right in the head, and watch his body get pinned on the wall. Now, I am a mapper/modder aswell and I know that the game has no stealth mechanic available to us, but in these “specific” situations a combination of “ai_relationship” entities and a bunch of triggers around the place are enough for a simple stealth scenerio.

That is about it, the mod overall was very good and I’m hoping to see another one, preferably with a bit more story.

FYI about stealth: another easy way to achieve stealth moments is to surround the player with block brushes covered in the block_LOS texture…then turn them into func_brush and then name them. then once the player attacks a Combine, makes a loud noise, or walks outside of the block_LOS brush, remove the brush from the world with “kill” I/O.

This can also be used to keep rebels from seeing/attacking headcrabs and Soldiers that might just be part of the scenery or simply too far away for your storytelling preferences…ie you want the rebels to be stealthy along with the player.

All of this circumvents the ai_replationship, which can get messy very fast!!

I’m not exactly sure what your method is but, by what I understood it doesn’t give the same effect. In your situation, the moment the player walks out of the brush the combine attack him, even if they would not actually “see” him. The only situation this would be effective is if you have the NPC’s be completly still.

I did some experimentation with stealth a couple months ago with the ai-relationship and triggers that allowed for stealth scenes with patrolling combine. Firstly create how many rooms you wish, each filled with a trigger. Then a combine patrolling around the rooms with a neutral attitude towards the player. Once the combine enters a new room, enable only the adjacent room triggers, that if triggered kill off the ai_relationship, thus making the soldier attack the player. Obviously this wouldn’t work with very complex rooms or structures without some serious planning and trigger work, but it is much more powerfull than your way I think.
You can also do a sort of “noise distraction” mechanic with the bugbait. After triggering the correspondent entity (can’t remember the name of it) it would make the combine move towards the specific room. Add a math counter and you can even make the enemy become aware of you if the player abuses this mechanic so that it can become a bit more realistic.

What I have got no idea for is how to detect the player making a loud noise. With your method, how would you detect the player making a sound, say for example, firing a weapon in a way that doesn’t hit the combine ?

Well what can I say… that really brightened up my sunday afternoon,a good old fashioned half life 2 mod the way they were meant to be done
… the only negative point I can think of is it wasnt long enough… but im sure with davids skills at mapping he will continue this mod or create another outstanding creation ( hope I dont have to wait another 5 years )
seriously though this was amazing … best parts must be the tram ride ( which brought back memories of how it all started with the black mesa tram ride ) … and the firefights with the combine …. I notice some said they were too repetetive … however I didnt think so
what does amaze me is how mappers/modders dont lose interest when creating a mod over a five year period so david must be congratulated for seeing the mod through for that length of time
I havent give a personal favourite to any mod this year,however “spherical nightmares” deserves this … its a outstanding mod which was a joy to play .. and as I mentioned earlier its a shame it wasnt longer …
well done david … I look forward to more of your work …. !

Where to start? At the beginning I guess; I loved the buildup in this mod, the flashbacks and environment set up the mystery really well. Scattered throughout the early levels are a variety of clues which I thought was a great way to enhance the story – it’s a shame this didn’t carry on all the way through, but I’ll get to that later. The grahpics are really nice too, some places are not extremely detailed but more than enough polish has been added, especially with the more destroyed areas. I also love the sphere effect in the skybox, it gives a good overall theme to the maps. I will have to have a look at how it was achieved!

Initially the gameplay starts of slow and simple, but the very scarce supply of health forced me into some more tactical thinking. There were only a couple of places where the lack of supplies became frustrating.

Anyway, around the middle of the mod the gameplay really becomes an issue for me. It gets to the stage where this is the all that happens:
Enter arena -> Exciting music plays -> Combine come in -> Kill Combine -> Music fades out -> Run to next area

This exact pattern must have repeated at least a dozen times through the course of the mod, and it just got really tiresome and, well repetitive. It could have easily been broken up with some more puzzles, exploration and even some more detail on the plot. (The plot which was set up goes away entirely until the very end of the mod.) It’s sad because that was really the only problem I could see with the whole thing.

The ending itself was pretty cool and a nice idea, but without any set up or context in the preceding areas it seemed pretty meaningless. And why was there a teleport in that random garage anyway?

I agree with MisterAddy about the repetitivness of the battle sequences. Where I disagree with MisterAddy is that was the only problem. There is an issue with repetitivness of battle areas and enviroments as well. The enviroments themselves (although somewhat different) seemed very “samey”. One section was just like the last section. One large (storage garage/indoor large area that looks like dry sewers?) after another, after another…all dark, and all seemingly connected by vents which was also a repetitive feature. There were puzzles constantly which served to slow the pace to a crawl.

What little story there was, were basically flashbacks which kinda got in my way as I tried desperatly to move forward a bit quicker in spite of the puzzles. After the half-way mark I began to get bored.

Construction was well done. The author took a lot of time to construct these maps, as much attention to detail is appearent. But some areas had things seemngly out of place. A shed indoors and stuff like that. Ambient sound was good, and the author did a fair job of throwing some different kinds of battles at times, forcing a slight change of stratagy every once in a while.

I liked the new soda machines and fishy signs and that kind of custom stuff. But the whole thing was too damn dark, and too run down looking! Cynder-block garage looking areas with trash stroon about…in a way it was like an extended version of the low rent section Ravenholm. By the halfway mark I was urning for some sunlight, just a little damn outdoors, and dont wait till the very end to do it! The Ravenholm bit for that long was really depressing me and causing me to start to lose interest.

Is it worth a play-though? Yes, if you dont mind those issues I mentioned. For example, someone who likes puzzles (I dont) might have a field day in here. It is a basically well constructed mod, with some issues.

I have to say I really liked this mod. The dark atmosphere, the story, the detail. I got a sense of Lost but on a previously inhabited island. There were a couple areas though that just felt like a jarring change.

Everyone here seems to say the story went by the wayside.
I would say

Spoiler:

The whole experience is an infinite loop. You are remembering the people who used to live on the island. I also think that the man is yourself, just in another run though. Might be clear off base but that’s my theory.

I enjoyed most of the mod, although there are a few things that I didn’t like.

Gameplay
-Most fights were balanced, but a bit repetitive. Each fight has no real “personality”, the only thing that changes is the area where it takes place.
-An exception to this was the part with the emplacement guns. The limited ammo prevented you from firing at random and you actually had to place your shots well.
-Nice puzzles!
-There were some cool moments, like the point where the Combine block the transit system and attack you.
-The explosive barrels felt very artificial, and made the Combine soldier AI, which is quite smart, look stupid, since they often took cover right next to a red barrel.
-I’m happy the Hunter-Chopper didn’t take 56 rockets to blow up (In HL2 its default life is 5600 HP which infact means 56 RPG rounds).

Visuals
-Lots of custom textures which gave the mod a very fresh feel.
-Very detailed environments.
-Breathtaking outdoor visuals, especially the balcony and the last area.
-The great visuals, however, felt a bit “wasted”. One of the things which pushes you to advance in videogames is the open sky as a reward. Here, you are trapped inside a building but you get a fantastic visual from a balcony which you are not even required to go to. That view should have been left for the player to see when he walks outside the first time.

Plot
-Ouch.
-The plot has one problem: it is useless. You play for one hour and a half only to realize that it was all a dream and that you actually didn’t do anything, you are still prisoner of the Combine and you will never escape from the island.
-As I mentioned earlier, giving the player a reward for completing the game is a great way to keep his interest high, but here the reward just disappears right when you expect to earn it.
-The plot felt like a wasted opportunity. It could have had the best ending in the world, with you making it to the ocean, and earning freedom. Why wasn’t it done?
-What do the black and white parts mean? What do they represent? Alright, I’m in some kind of asylum (I think) and I’m seeing flashbacks of when crazy people was still there. But what was the Combine doing there then? Why are they still on the island?

Despite the delusional plot, I still recommend playing it. It has stunning visuals, great mapping, great attention to detail and pretty solid gameplay, and you will probably enjoy most of it, except the ending.

Wow, a really nice mod!
The atmosphere and the created environments were really awesome, I especially loved the abandoned harbour after fighting the hunters.
The story was interested, but I couldn’t really accept the abrupt ending, something was “missing” – I thought that there was some kind of showdown/leaving the island/something left to do, and I was kinda disappointed with the scene, but that’s the only bad thing I can find.
Really much thought and planning was put into the layout and the design of the maps, many sall details and the art scene helped convey the image of a huge facility embedded in a mountain, located on a disappeared island – the skybox was wonderful!
The action sequences were set up really well, much diversity and environment-based combat was involved.
The only bug I noticed was when fighting the pacjk of hunters after leaving the mine, above the harbor: the first hunter’s flechettes launched me up on the roof of the tunnel above the harbor when I just jumped down from the small cliff, and from where it was really easy to just pick the hunters one by one.

This was an excellent mod. I loved the setup of the disappearing island and the subject evaluation reports that were left lying around. Overall I found the puzzles pretty easy and the quality level high. There was lots of “fun” ammo lying around so you could dispose of your enemies in a variety of ways (my favorite is to throw the gas can).

A few very small things that could have been better:

– I experienced some lag in the map where you fight with a group of soldiers and a turret
– I got stuck when I tried to jump out of the tram car that was disabled
– The author seemed to love using doors with fake locks on them. Sometimes they looked like real locks so I tried to “use” them but nothing happened. This got annoying after awhile.

So close to being a Personal Favorite, it didn’t make that mainly because of the fighting sequences becoming repetitive, in the sequence they happened as mentioned by many others already. However I thought they were very good for most of the mod. The standouts for me were the graphics, lighting and variety of scenes together with the puzzles.

I guess the fact was tried in the PP Beta testers collective definitely worth the effort!!! So many things I liked about this mod.

First the fact it tells a story as you play the mod, so I missed those kind of mods like that, then in this one, you will have a great story maybe quite short, but within a great scenario, in fact you can actually see the

Spoiler:

island inside the sphere

which is great, I think it was really cool as soon as I saw it in the outside.

Second, the mapping. It has a great quality and the details are in there, also the views are beautiful, the developer(s) integrated the indoor parts along with the outdoor maps just perfectly.

Third, this mod feels like an absoulte HL2 universe piece a million percent, i’d love to see more mods polished so well into the HL2 universe. The island the coal mine which was the main resource of whealt and set up a lifestyle to the inhabitants in there, the roads, and the obvious destruction after the CMB invassion was great, and this is a great example of how to put stories INTO the mods, the environment was great, the G-Man sights make of this a great little sweet story to play.

Fourth, and maybe the main point. The battles were TERRIFIC!!, I love battles that way, I mean, battles in scenarios that allow you as player to have strategies and beat the combines in many way, the mounted guns part was a delight!, then the Hunter battle was lovely I really loved that one. Maybe only one weak point of the mod was that they deliver the AR2 at the nearly end of the mod, perhaps a more equal weaponery distribution would come better.

Finally, well, I conclude that this is probably one of the greatest mods in 013, and should be nominated to the PP mod of the year, is really good in playability terms and is entretaining as hell.

PD. Maybe, if the story gaming plot would have guided me into the CMB structure that produced the sphere I would give this mod a Personal Favourite, well this mod makes a little HL2 universe from its own so maybe they can continue in soome other mod, the story into the CMB facilities that are placed in the heart of that mistery island.

I guess the fact was tried in the PP Beta testers collective definitely worth the effort!!! So many things I liked about this mod.

First the fact it tells a story as you play the mod, so I missed those kind of mods like that, then in this one, you will have a great story maybe quite short, but within a great scenario, in fact you can actually see the island inside the sphere.
which is great, I think it was really cool as soon as I saw it in the outside.

Second, the mapping. It has a great quality and the details are in there, also the views are beautiful, the developer(s) integrated the indoor parts along with the outdoor maps just perfectly.

Third, this mod feels like an absoulte HL2 universe piece a million percent, i’d love to see more mods polished so well into the HL2 universe. The island the coal mine which was the main resource of whealt and set up a lifestyle to the inhabitants in there, the roads, and the obvious destruction after the CMB invassion was great, and this is a great example of how to put stories INTO the mods, the environment was great, the G-Man sights make of this a great little sweet story to play.

Fourth, and maybe the main point. The battles were TERRIFIC!!, I love battles that way, I mean, battles in scenarios that allow you as player to have strategies and beat the combines in many way, the mounted guns part was a delight!, then the Hunter battle was lovely I really loved that one. Maybe only one weak point of the mod was that they deliver the AR2 at the nearly end of the mod, perhaps a more equal weaponery distribution would come better.

Finally, well, I conclude that this is probably one of the greatest mods in 013, and should be nominated to the PP mod of the year, is really good in playability terms and is entretaining as hell.

PD. Maybe, if the story gaming plot would have guided me into the CMB structure that produced the sphere I would give this mod a Personal Favourite, well this mod makes a little HL2 universe from its own so maybe they can continue in soome other mod, the story into the CMB facilities that are placed in the heart of that mistery island.

Fingers crossed! I’ve had this missing vtf problem before, it came up when selecting widescreen. I seem to remember just copying another vtf (renamed) which got it at least running again with video in forced-safe mode (-safe launch option), then when running, in video options selecting widescreen which overwrote the vtf with a new one.

However judging by the way steampipe screws around with many things, your error may be just the tip of the iceberg! Going back seems the safest bet, your Beta Testing status now includes “steam beta Guinea Pig”; good luck..

I’m going to image my hdd before I even consider trying steampipe, as I don’t trust them an inch. Even though I’ve carefully set all my games to no sync, and do not update – as I expected valve are completely ignoring my preferences as many exe’s and dll’s are being overwritten almost daily, judging by the file info. What a huge surprise – not.

Now for the review! The intro is outstanding, I think we can all agree. And I always love a mod that succeedes in messing with view angles (like in R&D when you’re on a falling structure)
The elevator lever still not indicating what it does.. but it seemed I didn’t need it?
Found a bug in that neat skybox under the right angle, the sun disappears..http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=151225058http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=151225072
It’s only the authors fault for making it so darn nice and making me look at it for so long, yet tryin to avoid the too bright sun.
Perfect level change(s throughout the mod), as I go down in the canal again and can’t backtrack, but looking back the level is fine; and perfect autosave as well, it cant mess with anything. A lot of mods fail at these chapters and he nails 2 birds with 1 stone.
The tunnel fight is nice, bit too short tho. Onto the train ride, in which I see GMan again for some reason, and has an unexpected stop. The fight there is nice again but too short.
And yet another pleasant dead end that just adds a bit of space in every map and a little more to explore, sometimes holding goodies even.
The level of detail is nice.. and I can say that again, in a lot of maps.
After the explosion on the track and after killing the visible combine, music not stopping is a giveaway of the fight not being over, so the pattern established so far maybe isn’t so wise to be used every time, but it is..
All the custom pics and messages are a v nice touch.
Oh idk what u did but I dont think this was here before, or maybe a recent ep2 bug.. going underwater after the hunter fight and looking up, the water is all pink checkers.
Omg a moving barrel in the battery puzzle area nice touch. Telling player that the steam hurts by killing a fast zombie, also good in a mod!
Fkn holes in concrete walls are an amazing touch hehe
The sun was buggy in the last map as well, it’s a shame but weird I didn’t notice it while playtesting.

For a short to medium mod, imo it’s very well made. And for the dome sky alone it will always have a special place in my hl heart

Good stuff, this. The environments are all very well done. As others have said, the story sort of gets set aside after the first fifteen minutes or so, only to be picked up again right at the end to tie everything together (-ish). There were a lot of physics projectiles lying around, so I ended up barely using any weapon aside from the gravity gun. There was also a lot of mid-range head-on combat against Combine soldiers behind cover – that seemed to be sort of a recurring theme.

Classic HL2 and great fun to play. Yes, it was slow to start, but I thought that was made up for later. Combating the three hunters took me a while to figure out a strategy. Difficulty was set right for medium. I guessed the ending from the title of the piece. There are other mods in the hall of fame that I hold in less regard to this one. I highly recommend it.